hand and walked into the flames, or with which women sang a song of
triumph while the grave-digger was shovelling the earth upon their living
faces, was a reality also.

Thus, the people of the Netherlands were already pervaded, throughout the
whole extent of the country, with the expanding spirit of religious
reformation. It was inevitable that sooner or later an explosion was to
arrive. They were placed between two great countries, where the new
principles had already taken root. The Lutheranism of Germany and the
Calvinism of France had each its share in producing the Netherland
revolt, but a mistake is perhaps often made in estimating the relative
proportion of these several influences. The Reformation first entered
the provinces, not through the Augsburg, but the Huguenot gate. The
fiery field-preachers from the south of France first inflamed the
excitable hearts of the kindred population of the south-western
Netherlands. The Walloons were the first to rebel against and the first
to reconcile themselves with papal Rome, exactly as their Celtic
ancestors, fifteen centuries earlier, had been foremost in the revolt
against imperial Rome, and precipitate in their submission to her
overshadowing power. The Batavians, slower to be moved but more
steadfast, retained the impulse which they received from the same source
which was already agitating their "Welsh" compatriots. There were
already French preachers at Valenciennes and Tournay, to be followed,
as we shall have occasion to see, by many others. Without undervaluing
the influence of the German Churches, and particularly of the garrison-
preaching of the German military chaplains in the Netherlands, it may be
safely asserted that the early Reformers of the provinces were mainly
Huguenots in their belief: The Dutch Church became, accordingly, not
Lutheran, but Calvinistic, and the founder of the commonwealth hardly
ceased to be a nominal Catholic before he became an adherent to the same